Jeff Sengstack asks colleagues and friends in the TV news, film, and video production industry to offer expert tips within their specialty to help you hone your story-creation skills, writing style, and even business acumen.

Stepping up to film: expert advice from cinematographer Charly
Steinberger

The business of video production: Sam Prigg's tips on starting a
video production company

Doing the video production thing: Joe Walsh's event shooting
tips

Premiere Pro is a powerful video production tool. By choosing Premiere Pro,
you've made a commitment to take your video production quality up several
notches. To do that requires more than learning new editing techniques. You also
need to hone your story-creation skills, writing style, and even business
acumen. By moving to Premiere Pro, you're showing the kind of interest in
video production that frequently leads to a profession within that industry.

This hour addresses those issues. I've turned to some colleagues and
friends in the TV news, film, and video production industry and asked them to
offer expert tips within their specialty.

Getting the Story Right

I worked in the TV news business as a reporter and anchorman as well as
shooter and editor. In my 11 years working on-camera and off, I constantly
critiqued my work and asked others to do the same. Some offered their advice in
writing and I hung on to those words of wisdom:

An NBC producer who ran the affiliate feeda daily collection
of stories made available to local network stations for their useonce
wrote about a prison counseling piece that I submitted to him. He said that my
"story talked about" the subject "but showed
nothing" about it. My tape "cried out for some natural sound of a
session in progress."

A Seattle TV news director wrote that my stories had a samenessa
voice track, a sound bite, more voiceover, another sound bite, and a standup
close. "Mix 'em up," he suggested.

And a consultant took me aside to tell me to "break up my on-camera
pacing with pauses."

I took all those tips to the bank. The NBC producer ended up buying about a
story a week from me. The news director helped me get a job in a much larger
market. And the consultant's advice helped me land an anchor job at that
station.

I'm a believer in heeding expert advice.

In putting together this book, I've had the enjoyable opportunity to
contact many of the people who have given me advice or from whom I have gained a
lot of practical knowledge. Each agreed to provide expert tips focusing on their
specialty. You've already met photographer Karl Petersen in Hour 2,
"Camcorder and Shooting Tips." In Hour 7, "Applying Professional
Edits and Adding Transitions," you'll hear from editor John Crossman.
And in Hour 12, "Acquiring Audio," Chris Lyons, an audio engineer from
the world's leading microphone manufacturer, Shure, Inc., offers up his
expert advice.

For this hour, I compiled six expert columns. I think they all speak to
enhancing your skills beyond the fundamentals of camerawork, editing, and simply
learning how to use Premiere Pro's toolset. Further, you might want to take
what you do with Premiere Pro and move into a career in video production. These
experts speak to that.

Up first, Bob Dotson.

Story-Creation Tips from Bob Dotson

NBC-TV Today Show correspondent Bob Dotson is, I think, the best
human-interest feature-story TV reporter. Dotson has received more than 50
awards. The National Press Photographers Association award committee wrote,
"Bob Dotson's reports help us understand ourselves a bit better. They
show that all our lives are important and really matter. After all, this country
was built not by great heroes or great politicians, but by ordinary
peopleby thousands whose -names we don't know, may never know, but
without whose influence America wouldn't exist."

Although you probably aren't a TV newsperson, you'll probably
create human-interest storiesDotson's forte. If there's a
storyteller out there you should emulate, I think he's the one. During my
TV reporting days I tried to watch all his stories, and when a station I worked
for offered me the chance to attend one of his seminars, I jumped at it.

I've reproduced my notes, with his approval, here. I took many things
away from his class. Three points stand out:

Give viewers a reason to remember the story.

When interviewing people, try not to ask questions. Merely make
observations. That loosens people up, letting them reveal their emotional, human
side to you.

Make sure that you get a closing shot. Most video producers look
for dramatic opening shots or sequences (and that's still a good thing),
but your viewers are more likely to remember the closing shot.

Bob Dotson's Storyteller's Checklist

Dotson's Storyteller's Checklist inspired his book Make It
Memorable (Bonus Books) and a companion videotape of all the stories in the
book. He prepared his list (and book) with TV news reporters in mind, but his
tips apply to professional, corporate, and home video producers as well:

Always remember that the reporter is not the story.

Make sure the commitment is present. Commitment is your
description of the story, stated in one sentence. That is, what you want the
audience to take away from the report. You should be able to state the
commitment as a complete sentence with subject, verb, and object. "Outside
money is altering the city's architecture," "This cow has never
taken an order in her life," "You can't murder a pumpkin,"
and so on. You formulate this commitment to yourself to help guide the story
creation. Then you use your images to prove the commitment visually. Very seldom
will you state the commitment verbally in any story.

Write your pictures first. Give them a strong lead, preferably
visual, that instantly telegraphs the story to come.

The main body of the story should usually be no more than three to
five main points, which you prove visually after you've identified
them.

Create a strong closethat you can't top, something
you build toward throughout the story. Ideally, the ending is also
visual.

Write loose. Be hard on yourself as a writer. Say nothing in the
script that your viewers would already know or that the visuals say more
eloquently.

Throughout the story, build your report around sequencestwo
or three shots of a guy buying basketball tickets, two or three shots of a
husband and wife drinking coffee at a kitchen table, and so on. Sequences demand
matched action.

Allow for moments of silence. Stop writing occasionally and let
two or three seconds or more of compelling action occur without voiceover. For a
writer, nothing is more difficult to write than silence. For viewers, sometimes
nothing is more eloquent.

Use strong natural sound to heighten realism, authenticity,
believability, and to heighten the viewer's sense of vicarious
participation in the events you're showing. Some reports merely enable you
to watch what happened. The best reports make it possible for you to experience
what happened.

Tell your story through people. People sell your story. Try to
find strong central characters engaged in compelling action that is visual or
picturesque.

Build in surprises to sustain viewer involvement. Surprises help
viewers feel something about the story; surprises lure uninterested viewers to
the screen. Surprises can be visual, wild sounds, short bites, or poetic script.
Always, surprises are little moments of drama.

Short sound bites prove the story you are showing. Don't use
sound bites as substitutes for more effective storytelling.

Address the larger issue. "A trailer home burned down."
Such a story fails to meet the "so what?" test. "The trailer home
burned down because the walls are full of flammable insulation" describes
the larger issue and meets the "so what?" test.

Finally, make your story memorable. Can your viewers feel
something about the story and its subjects? If feeling is present, the story
will be memorable. It will stick in the viewers' minds.

Keep It Simple...and Short

As a coda to Dotson's advice, I'll add that you need to remember,
this is only TV. You need some mighty compelling or entertaining material to
keep viewers glued to the tube for more than a few minutes. Think about whatever
message you're trying to get across in your video project and consider what
images, sound, and graphics will convey that message in the briefest, most
effective manner. Then shoot with brevity in mind.

That's not to say that you don't grab unplanned video that looks
great. Or that you cut interviews short even if you haven't heard some
compelling sound bites. Videotape is expendable. Feel free to shoot plenty.
Although it's true that you might have to wade through a lot to find the
best shots, the advantage of DV is that after these shots have been located, you
can simply capture them to your hard drive and they become immediately
accessible.